It wasn't fair

It wasn't fair.

They died right in front of my eyes.

I was just there, just there, just helpless.

I was too weak.

I should have trained harder, I should have prepared, I should have known this mission wouldn't be just a game. I should have been stronger, wiser, and more powerful. I should have been able to keep their hearts beating; I should have been able to force some breath into those chests. I should have protected them, I should have kept them out of harm's way. But I didn't. I failed.

It wasn't fair how those people looked at me with genuine sympathy, undeniable disgust and potent awe at the same time. They shouldn't have been able to at least say 'I'm sorry,' when what they truly wanted to say was that they don't want to end up like me, all alone; how my team mates died and I didn't; how I managed not to shed a single tear at the funerals; and how I was even able to come back from that dangerous mission alive.

I can read the spirals of emotions tumbling in their eyes, heard the unnecessary pitch in their voice, and I knew the hypocrisy of those words. They were all hypocrites; they were the ones who should be pitied!

It wasn't fair they were the ones who had to be taken. He was my best friend. He always laughed, always cheered us up, always found a reason to have a bright smile on this face in the most hopeless of circumstances. He had so much energy in him, and he has always been able to add a little more happiness to everyone around him. He had so many dreams he wanted to fulfill, a particular great future he planned for himself. He had a whole life ahead of him, but in the end, there was just a trickle of red sliding over the corner of his usually smiling mouth as his determined eyes slowly closed. I sensed the desperation in him, how I wanted to shake him and tell him not to give up! But as the grip on the kunai loosened, and as the broken body relaxed, he was saying that he just wanted to sleep. To rest in eternal slumber, to slip inside a peaceful oblivion where there was no pain, no suffering, no life, no death…

In the end, he just wanted to be taken away.

She was a beautiful, petite girl, with kind, kind eyes and a golden heart. She always cared, cared for everyone, even though she was sometimes ignored or taken for granted. She didn't mind; that was how lovely and kind she was. She worked hard to improve herself, to reach everyone's expectations of her, but she didn't need to. All she needed to do was survive this mission, but that was what her fragile body couldn't take. One eye that had always came gently upon everyone she encountered was bruised and nearly shut, a series of cuts and bruises contrasting against her delicate features, her heaving chest, the look of defeat on her face, they were signs. Signs to tell me that she wasn't going to make it, to make myself ready, unlike when shock overtook me when he left this world.

Her last breath didn't even come.

They were my friends; my only true friends. Everything we had ever wanted and needed was there for us, us as a team. What misery destiny must have planned for me for everything to turn out this way is unknown to me.

People ask why there are no tears flowing down my cheeks when I remember them, my friends, my team mates, all the great times and low moments we experienced and went through as a team. Why?

I do not know. Maybe because it is against the general code of a shinobi to show any weakness or emotion when you supposedly had none. Maybe because I felt like I was betraying them if I cried in front of all these people unknown to me when I had never broken down in front of them. Maybe because I was bitter, and that what I wanted is not to stand here, alive and facing the world, but to have left it with them, because then I'll be spared the wretchedness gnawing inside of me to think that I survived, and they didn't, when it was supposed to be the other way around.

It wasn't fair.